THE ODYSSEY. To 1 April.

London

THE ODYSSEY
by David Farr based on Homer

Lyric Theatre Hammersmith To 1 April 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed 1.30pm Sat 2.30pm
Captioned 23 March
Runs 2hr 25min One interval

TICKETS: 08700 500511
www.lyric.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 13 March

Don’t delay: by the end of the run there won’t be a seat to be had for this exhilarating, excellently-acted production.
Despite the towering figure of goddess Athena speaking to an Odysseus thrown upon his homeland’s shore at the opening, David Farr’s Homeric adaptation soon plays its first ace by having the outcast, home after 20 years at Troy and at sea, held in a detention-centre for asylum-seekers. Like the Greek dramatists, Farr begins in the middle of things and the power of Homer’s stories is attested by the interest the initially brutal guards, with their casual racism (justified by one in a post-interval speech that smoothly moves from comic to deadly serious), take in his case.

From the start the modern setting earths the wonderfully varied theatricality Farr employs for Odysseus’ history. Entering the wire-mesh compound is the huge Cyclops with its one-eye spotlight, looming over Odysseus in interrogation. And the lotus-eaters’ flower-power hippiedom, their perfumed blossoms transporting them into peace-and-love mode.

Or there’s the shadowplay of Circe turning men into swine. And the four winds, loosed from their bag, which, via theatre’s old blackout technology, leave Odysseus’ men blasted against the wire. Serious events can acquire comic edges, bringing variety of tone to the stylistic feast.

Verbal and scenic images of dark and light weave through the piece, but there’s no doubt which mood finally prevails. When they learn his identity his fellow-detainees, Trojan exiles, turn silently from him. They realise revenge is pointless. But it comes, through the power of their story, told as a puppet-show. As they replay the defeat he inflicted on them, Stephen Noonan’s steely Odysseus journeys further in his head than he has travelled at sea.

The play’s opening echoes Shakespeare’s Viola. “What country is this?” shipwrecked Odysseus demands (the word lost from Shakespeare is “friends”). By the end his question has changed from ‘where am I?’ to ‘who am I?’ The answer, from someone by now as disoriented mentally by the results his exploits have led to as he has been physically by the gods, is the name adopted as a temporary expedient to escape the Cyclops. Just as he’s discovered to be a somebody in Ithaca, Odysseus realises that now he’s ‘Nobody’.

Athena: Dave Fishley
Roger: Colin Mace
Harold: Stuart McLoughlin
Maira/Penelope: Celia Meiras
Odysseus: Stephen Noonan
Circe/Odysseus’ Mother: Mia Soteriou
Musician: Peter Troake

Director: David Farr
Designer: Angela Davies
Lighting: Chris Davey
Sound: Nick Manning
Music: Stu Barker
Choreography: Ann Yee
Puppetry: Mervyn Millar

2006-03-15 13:46:54